Northlight (3 page)

“
Let go?
Avi saved my life at Brassaford! Shit, she saved
yours
a dozen times over. She could be hurt out there, dying, taken by the northers, I don't know! How can you tell me to
let go?”

“Don't fool yourself, Kardith,” he said. “Since when do northers take prisoners? I've lost one of my best people out there. And
one is enough.
”

I downed the rest of my cup. If I tried to answer, I might say anything, do anything.

“If you do go messing around out there,” he went on, “if you disobey Montborne's orders, then I must enforce them.”

Only if you catch me first.

What was the use? With my right hand or without it, I'd no longer be a Ranger.

But here I was, having come straight to Laureal City, just like Derron said and at a pace fit to kill my good gray mare, repeating to the officer that I'd deliver the packet to General Montborne and no one else.

“The General's in meeting with Pateros and the Inner Council,” he said, as if everybody knew that. “You want to wait here — ” a bench against the painted stone wall that made my rump ache just looking at it, “ — or outside? Maybe catch a sight of them as they come out?”

A thrill for a know-nothing country girl, you mean, you with your fancy uniform and your little bat-sticker knife. Out on the Ridge it's you who'd be a sniveling worm in less than a week.

All those tough words to cover how scared I was. Mother-of-us-all, did I imagine this would be easy? I knew I'd have to face Montborne to finish my official mission here. I knew I'd have to somehow get to Pateros. But I hadn't counted on having anything to do with the Inner Council, even in passing.

The Inner Council. And
she
would be there, Esmelda of Laurea, who would have been powerful enough if she just spoke for the University. I'd heard of her, even on the Ridge. Who hadn't? Twenty years ago, the story goes, a plague swept through Laureal City — pestis fever, they called it. Nasty stuff, all flux and oozing boils. They said the Guardian was near dead of it and half the Senate too, looting and wildfires from the solar foundries, people leaving to spread the plague to the countryside. They said Esmelda made a speech right there in the plaza and while she was talking, the rains came and put the fires out. They said she went everywhere, night after night, keeping people's hopes alive until the medicians found a cure. They said no one died whom she'd touched.

I'd never in my life met a woman like that, or a man either. But Pateros had lived and the city was still here.

Esmelda of Laurea. Aviyya's mother.

Avi told me about her as we lay together under the stars, camped in the Brassa Hills or on Ridge patrol. Everything seemed sharper then, maybe more real, I don't know, but different, that was sure — all the things inside of us that we could never say aloud. I came to understand that Esmelda had given her own life to the University and Laurea and expected her daughter to do the same. She kept pounding it in until Avi couldn't tell who she was, so full of rage she had no place there. Avi finally left and carved out a new one in the Rangers. That part I understood very well.

From the top of the steps, I saw a knot of people filing out of the Starhall. First some kids — pages, they were called — running off on their errands. Then Pateros. I recognized his easy stride, even without the ashy-silver hair. Tall and gaunt in his green robe. Stooped over a little, talking to a man in a red and bronze uniform, who held himself like his spine was all one solid piece, a couple of military aides playing shadow — that had to be Montborne. Half a dozen older men and women with their own assistants. A gaea-priest in flowing rainbow silks who shuffled along as if his eyeballs were permanently rolled up in his shaven skull.

They moved on to the plaza. The two City Guards, who'd been waiting at the entrance, strutted along either side, their hands on their batons. Montborne went off with one of his officers and a green-robed woman, gesturing as he talked.

Whatever Montborne was up to, the woman wasn't having any of it. A man still three parts boy, yet too old for a page, trailed behind her.

The people who'd been waiting gathered around Pateros, their voices like the cries of rock-doves. They surrounded him, touching his sleeve and shaking his hand, each one in turn. Then they backed off, lingering. The few still scattered across the plaza began to hurry, to reach Pateros before he was gone. One of them caught my eye, like a raptor-bat in a coop of barnfowl. There was no outward reason he attracted my attention, maybe his dark blue clothes, overly somber by Laurean standards. I saw nothing in his hands.

Suddenly a man in the crowd started yelling and waving his hands. The City Guards rushed between him and Pateros. The gaea-priest waded in, arms lifted, probably chanting something like, “Let me help you to attain cosmic attunement, my child.” The man skittered away, still shouting.

The man in blue kept coming, faster now, right for Pateros. He disappeared into the crowd, working his way inward. But I felt him in my blood, not anything of who he was as a man, but what he was in this place, which was all that mattered. The breaker's breaker, that's what he was.

No one else took any notice of him. The Guards were still busy calming the yelling man.

I started yelling, too, some dumbshit like
Stop him!
or
Watch out!
and then I was pounding across the pavement, running on fire instead of breath. My riding boots slapped and clattered on the stones. No one heard me above the shouting, milling crowd.

What's wrong with them? Why can't they see?

A space opened in the crowd and I spotted him again, the man in blue — standing right next to Pateros.

I needed only a few more moments, but I was still halfway across the plaza. I tried to scream again. The air whizzed by me. I couldn't get a lungful.

Pateros paused, bending his head toward the blue man as if listening intently. The blue man sidled closer. His right shoulder lifted. Montborne and his aides were already moving, the City Guards elbowing back through the crowd.

I was too damned late and too damned far. There would be no Kardith's Leap this time.

The blue man twisted, a quick spiraling thrust, and Pateros's long green robe rippled and jerked.

Pateros fell slowly at first, as if he weighed nothing. Then he crumpled against Montborne, pulling him to the pavement.

Someone screamed, high and light like a wounded pig. The blue man burst from the crowd. I swerved toward him. His teeth made a jagged line. Sweat stained his shirt. He spotted me and started to run. A woman from the crowd grabbed him hard around the hips. He pulled free, but a heavy-shouldered man in a military uniform was right on him and I caught the glint of a drawn knife.

Pateros lay sprawled on his back, cradled in Montborne's arms. I pushed my way through the onlookers and knelt by his side, still hoping wild and stupid hopes. It was a hurried thrust, a dagger I'd guess, and on the right side, away from the heart. It could have missed a fatal target. It could have. Liver or guts, yes, he'd bleed inside but this was Laurea, Mother damn it,
Laurea!
There were medicians and a hospital here, and there wasn't a person here, me included, who wouldn't empty their veins to have him live.

There's not enough blood, I thought dazedly.

I caught a glimpse of the dagger — it
was
a dagger, with a hilt of bone carved norther style. It sat in the center of a spreading red stain like the heart of an aging, blowzy flower.

Why didn't I start running a moment sooner? Why didn't anyone else see?

The other Inner Council woman shoved me aside and bent over Pateros. Pale red hair parted along a line of sunburn but I couldn't see her face. Her movements were quick and deft. She breathed into Pateros's mouth, and his chest rose and fell as if he were still alive. Then she shifted to pumping on the breastbone over the heart's great chambers. Montborne took over the breathing. People whispered and held on to each other, as if they could hold on to Pateros, too. The gaea-priest raised his hands, chanting more dumbshit.

He's gone, he's gone.
I felt this place without him, this vast and terrible place.

The red-haired woman kept pounding as if the pattern hadn't changed.

“How can that help now?” I whispered.

“It'll keep him alive until they get the unit from the hospital.” The voice was young and shaken, the eyes rainwater-gray. Black hair spiked out in all directions. It was the kid trailing the old woman who said
No
to Montborne.

Not just any old woman, either.

I slowly got to my feet. The military aides were still pulling people off the man in blue. Someone said, “He's dead — his throat's cut.” He should have been captured alive, and what for? Would knowing whatever crazy thing drove him bring Pateros back? Or give me someone else I could ask for help finding Avi? Or make Montborne take back his damned orders?

Mother-of-us-all, here I am, thinking only about my own pain! Is that why you never answer me? Is that why you kept me from acting until it was too late?

But I was praying to the wrong god. It was the demon god of chance, the god without a soul, who owned me now.

The plaza filled with people who'd heard the commotion or happened to wander through on other business. Some of them stayed, caught like moths at a candle. Others darted away to spread word all over the city. Over and over I heard the same cries of
No
and
Why?
and the same throttled silences.

The two City Guards and the military aides moved us, the original crowd, off to the side. Whether we were witnesses or suspects, they themselves weren't sure. A uniform never made anybody think straighter, and there were too many people in authority here. Besides Montborne and the gaea-priest, there were the Inner Circle, each used to giving orders and not about to be herded around with a bunch of civilians.

More Guards and military people came running, full scramble. Montborne turned Pateros over to an older officer and got to his feet. In a few moments, he had them all sorted out, some off to summon more help, some keeping us away from the newcomers and everyone away from the two bodies. The crowd settled a little.

Around me, people held on to each other, a few sobbing out loud, a few as pissed as if they've been accused of the killing themselves. Some of them chanted along with the gaea-priest, trying to pray life back into Pateros.

The hospital team arrived in one of those solar-powered carts you see only in cities. They fussed over Pateros and hauled him away, not saying anything definite, as if they couldn't tell death without their machines.

What's wrong with these people, don't they know how much worse it is to hope?

My body was bursting to hit or scream or run. I couldn't stop thinking of the day Westifer died. When we made it back to camp in the hills above Brassaford, after a day and a half fighting straight through, I thought I was too tired to move. But every time I sat down I felt just like I did, here in the plaza. What I did then was to take the camp hand axe and start chopping the biggest tree I could find. Swearing all the time to keep from crying, me who never cries, because here in Laurea, everyone makes holy-holy over their thousands of trees and out on the steppe there were no trees. And there was no Westifer, not now, not ever again, no matter what those damned priests said. Fire or blood or cold or thirst, it gets you in the end and then it's all for nothing.

For nothing!

I screamed it out until my throat was raw. My hands blistered and my shoulders went to fire and my back and legs cramped so I could hardly stand. I kept thinking I couldn't go on, and as long as that was all I was thinking, I did.

Captain Derron came out and yelled so loud I finally heard him. “You wolf-bitch! The rest of the squadron's dead tired. They need rest even if you don't. Who do you think you're helping by cutting down half the forest? You think
Westifer
cares what you do now?”

I stopped and stared at him, gulping night air so cold it turned my lungs to ice.

It wasn't Westifer who made me act like that and I knew it. I didn't even like the man, but we'd shared each other's ale, stitched up each other's cuts, saved each other's lives. Someone else would take his place, and we'd go right on putting our skins between Laurea and the north. Nothing changed because one man died.

I couldn't understand why I felt this way.

“Sometimes I think I know you and then something happens and I realize how strange you are. I can't understand you.”

It was Aviyya in my memory now, whispering by the fading campfire when everyone else was asleep. I didn't remember where or when, only the bitter-cold night and the stars edged with blue.

I'd made myself lie still to hear what must come next. My heart beat once, twice, ripples spreading outward, stopping at my skin. I told myself,
I am a Ranger. This is my life, my place when I have no other. If Westifer dies, if Avi turns away from me, what does it matter?

Avi went on, her voice soft as a feather. “Maybe that's why I love you, because
understanding
has so little to do with it. Understanding is what my mother's so good at. You — you are for me, just for me.”

After that, I was still a Ranger, but no longer only.

Now, standing in the plaza in Laureal City, I held myself absolutely still, as hard a training as any knife-form. I tried to spot the man who'd drawn the City Guards off by shouting, but I couldn't find him. No surprise, I could be looking right at him and not know his face. He could have slipped away after Pateros was stabbed. Nobody was watching him, that's sure. Running wouldn't prove he had anything to do with the man in blue. In his place I'd have run, too.

Finally the City Guard Chief arrived, a short, dark-skinned woman in middle years. The scrapper type. If she were a man I'd say she had to be twice as tough and twice as stupid to make up for a few inches in height. She stepped aside with Montborne, and when they come back, she was the one who gave the orders.